6.1 The Atlantic Trade

Question 1

Define Monopoly.

Answer 1

The exclusive right to trade and profit from an area of business.

Question 2

Define Chattel Enslavement.

Answer 2

Form of slavery where the person is bought and becomes movable property, no longer human.

Question 3

Define Asiento.

Answer 3

Permission by the Spanish government granted to Britain to buy slaves on behalf of Spain and sell slaves to Spanish colonies, in return for gold bullion

Question 4

Explain the Treaty of Utrecht 1713.

Answer 4

This Treaty marked the rise of British power.
- Spain and Portugal had been at war. Their peace treaty meant that Spain was not allowed to build forts or buy labour from West Africa.
- Spain had to look for other trading partners to continue to buy slaves.
- These agreements were called Asiento and Spain granted Asiento to England for 30 years and from then on, England dominated the Atlantic Trade.

Question 5

Define Plantations.

Answer 5

Large estates in America producing crops such as tobacco, cotton and sugar

Question 6

Define Indentured Labourers.

Answer 6

Workers in forced employment, unable to leave until their period of indenture was over

Question 7

Why did plantation owners prefer to use indentured (convict) labour in the 1650s?

Answer 7

For planters there were advantages to employing White workers:
- They spoke the same language as their masters
- They were cheaper - half the price of enslaved Africans
- Their high hopes of a better future once freed could make them positive and hardworking. After all, not all had been forced: some were willing migrants escaping worse conditions in Britain.

Question 8

Why did plantation owners begin to prefer African slaves?

Answer 8

• After 1700, the price for an enslaved African was decreasing and this encouraged them to buy more Africans.
• They were more productive; they could be lashed to death if they did not work hard enough
• Because they were ‘owned’, they and their children were the planter’s permanent property
• Their agricultural skills had been developed in a similar climate
• They were cheaper to clothe and maintain

Question 9

Define Plantocracy.

Answer 9

A society governed and controlled by plantation owners, backed up by military force and the law.

Question 10

Who was profiting from the plantation system?

Answer 10

• In Britain more and more people wanted to buy sugar (profit for merchants)
• To meet their needs, the planters ordered more enslaved Africans from the West African coast (profit for slave traders)
• In the Caribbean more and more sugar was produced on the plantations (profit for plantation owners)
• Across the Atlantic, increased shipments of sugar to Britain (profit for shipping companies)
• In Britain, those who profit had more spending power, money to spend on luxuries.

Question 11

Reasons the slave system was not an economic success.

Answer 11

• As they were not paid, enslaved Africans were not motivated to work hard
• The planters could not hire and fire their employees
• Enslaved Africans regularly rebelled, ran away or sabotaged the business
• The system was difficult to manage, workers were hard to control and profits were not huge. In the end, investors realised this, which is one reason why the slave trade was eventually abolished.
• The system would have worked better with free European labour.

Question 12

Reasons why the plantations were highly successful.

Answer 12

• They were efficient, effective, modern businesses
• Over their lifetimes, enslaved workers produced far more profit than the cost of buying them
• Planters with enslaved workers made far more profit than planters with free workers
• The plantation system was the first example of a highly organised mass workforce on a production line, producing profit for its owners. It paved the way for the Industrial Age.

Question 13

Plantations in America

Answer 13

• Over time, the plantations of America became dominated by wealthy merchants and businessmen who bought up plantations to create a plantocracy backed by legal and military force
• They were very profitable and were the first example of a highly organised mass workforce paving the way for the Industrial Age, however, rebellions were common, and the system was difficult to manage

Question 14

The Triangular Trade - Background

Answer 14

• The RAC was founded by James II to monopolise trade between England and Africa. It’s HQ was Cape Coast Castle as well as having 17 more forts along the coast. The biggest threat to the RAC came from pirates who attacked and seized 100 slave ships until the 1722 Act of the Suppression of Piracy, put an end to piracy which had cost the RAC and other ships and cargo worth £100,000
• Between 1672 and 1713, the RAC sent 500 ships to Africa and exported goods worth £1.5 m
• After the Glorious Revolution, the RAC lost its monopoly and the triangular trade was opened to private business.
• This generated jobs for Britons and great profit was made by companies who traded enslaved Africans for goodsto import to Britain like tobacco, sugar and cotton

Question 15

State the three challenges to the trade

Answer 15

• Resistance in Africa
• Uprisings on slave ships
• Piracy

Question 16

Challenges to the trade - resistance in Africa

Answer 16

• Some African rulers opposed human trafficking and even fought against it
• Others, such as Agaja, the king of Dahomey (in modern Benin), attacked and destroyed European forts
• Many who were kidnapped on the coast tried to run away, and some succeeded

Question 17

Challenges to the trade - uprisings on slave ships

Answer 17

• One example in 1729 was on the Clare, where captives rose up against the crew, forced them off the ship and managed to reach the safety of land near Cape Coast Castle
• Another was on the Little George in 1730, when captives took control of the ship, sailed it up the Sierra Leone River and escaped
• Over the whole period of the triangular trade, there were more than 500 such rebellions

Question 18

Challenges to the trade - Piracy

Answer 18

• After the War of the Spanish Succession ended, thousands of men on Royal Navy warships were laid off
• As a result there were too many men seeking too few jobs on the merchant ships
• There were several mutinies by sailors on slave ships and large numbers of sailors chose to become pirates
• Many pirate crews were multiracial and multinational, including Africans freed from the slave ships, although their violent attacks on those ships were for their own gain
• Some pirate ships were often run democratically and non-racially, offering far more freedom to their crews than any of them would ever experience under British rule
• The 1722 law against pirates changed this

Question 19

Why did plantations have a strong support from the government in London?

Answer 19

• Access to raw materials, large quantities of valuable crops (sugar, tobacco, cotton etc,) for sale in Britain and overseas
• New markets in the colonies for British goods such as iron tools
• Work opportunities at a time when there were not enough jobs for people in Britain
• Economic and strategic advantage over European powers
• Large profits for business, which could then be invested in new projects
• Money, though taxation, for the government to spend on the armed forces and expanding the empire

Question 20

Briefly explain the triangular trade

Answer 20

• Plantation crops sent from the Americas to Europe (silk, tobacco etc)
• Manufactured goods sent from Europe to Africa (cloth, guns etc)
• Slaves sent from Africa to the Americas